


tell me where i came from (what i will always be)

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aromantic Neo, Canonical Character Death, Consequences, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Illnesses, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prose Poem, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Scars, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 10:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20226385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Neo and the Matrix.Imagine you're Neo, and you come back from the dead.





	tell me where i came from (what i will always be)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aqueeraphale (quills_of_the_wicked)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quills_of_the_wicked/gifts).

Imagine this. Imagine you're Neo, and you come back from the dead. 

A miracle, right? True love's kiss and everything. You defeat the antagonists and prove your worth in a heroic second wind that rivals anything done before, in the Matrix or out. 

You can stop bullets with your mind and tear code apart. You're a miracle. A dream come true. 

The savior. The _ One. _

Imagine you're Neo, and you see code. You see through the code to the matrix within. Everything is green falling symbols—architecture, and people, earth and sky. You come out of the Matrix blinking the aftereffects away, and they _don't_.

Everything is still code, but different. People are webs of firing neurons. Technology is a twisting mass of potential, too thick to read. Metal is written through with purpose.

Imagine you're Neo, and Morpheus takes your face in his hands and tells you that you're the One, that you can free humanity from the machines, and you don't know how to tell him that humanity built machines for a reason.

Imagine you're Neo and you let Trinity believe what she will about you and her—you'll take anything at this point. You see her neurons firing when she looks at you, and you start to get addicted to the feeling of skin on yours.

Imagine you're Neo and Morpheus can't stop smiling. Even after Tank dies coughing up blood in the Operator's chair, Morpheus has you training the day after the wake. 

Imagine you’re Neo and you wake up with blood in your mouth and split knuckles and bruised knees.

Imagine you're Neo and you blink out of the Matrix and see the webs of green that are Morpheus and Trinity. They help you out of the chair, and you start to seize and shake as soon as the plug is out of your head, eyes watering from overexposure, struggling to readjust to a world that isn’t bending under your feet, calling out for help from people that were never real.

(Imagine you're Neo and the first time you go to Zion, people throw themselves at your feet like you're the Messiah, and you don't sleep that night. Are you the messiah? You know there was a concept of Christ before the machines took over. Did the machines plan it like this? Did they learn the Bible from their creators?)

Imagine you're Neo and you dip in and out of fever as you become accustomed to the perpetual influx of information. The migraine you had after Morpheus downloaded martial arts into your brain for ten hours straight is nothing compared to this. 

You don't know how to explain it. It's like knowing a language, like knowing _ every _ language, so fluently that you see things and think of every word for them that exists, and knowing you could reach out and change all those words, so that for all of history the word _ dark _ meant _ light. _

Imagine you're Neo and you’re in the Matrix standing on a building because you have no reason to be afraid of heights.

People are dying. People die every day. Heart attacks, homicides, suicides, old age. People are dying. If you focus, if you reach out as far as you can, you can prevent it. Prevent _ everything. _ Just for a day, or an hour, or ten seconds, and for a week afterward you’re blind with pain, but you _ can. _

Imagine you're Neo and you don't need to fight. You can see the code of the Agents, the buildings, the ground. You could make the earth open up and swallow them. 

Once, you do. You come out of the Matrix grinning bloodily and that night you lay in bed with Trinity and start crying and can't stop. You're only human. You're only human. You're only human.

Imagine you’re Neo and you weren’t supposed to survive. You’re the Messiah, but you’re only human. Imagine you’re Neo and you were meant to die gasping in the rubble of your victory, imagine you’re Neo and you’re meant to hang for the crime of winning.

Imagine you’re Neo and you survive. You’re scarred—not beautifully. You’re blind in one eye and missing the tips of a few fingers, and your arms are rippled with burns.

Imagine you’re Neo and you survive beyond your purpose.

Imagine the war is over and you can't stand to be around people. Your skin crawls and your good eye spasms across their green-threaded bodies, trying to gather information. You know how you would kill them if you had to. Trinity tells you to hush when you wake up screaming next to her. You start to have visions again.

Imagine you're Neo and you don't know if you won the war or not, because everything is code—you don't know if it's your mind superimposing what's important over what's distracting or if you're back in the Matrix or if you're dreaming.

or if you're dead

Imagine you're Neo and you move almost out of sight of civilization after Morpheus dies. They ask you to speak at his wake and you do. your voice wavers and breaks in front of all of humanity, and they love it. They love you. They love that you’re human. They love that you’re the One and you’re human. They roar and scream and wail for you, and the next day you pack your things and move to where the forest is starting to grow.

Imagine you're Neo and you don't know if anything is real. Imagine you're Neo and the last battle scarred you, and you run your fingers over your burn-warped skin, trying to remember that you would never remember yourself like this.

Imagine you're Neo and blind in one eye, and more often than not you cover your good eye and navigate the garden by touch alone, on hands and knees, burying your fingers in the dirt, and hope that it wasn’t all for naught.

Imagine you're Neo and you came back from the dead.


End file.
